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Andika — FAQ and Known Issues

Annie Olsen, 2011-07-18; 8504 reads

Table of Contents for this web page:

    Frequently Asked Questions
        Q: Where does the name "Andika" come from?
        Q: What characters are included in this release?
        Q: What are all the stages of release for the Andika fonts?
        Q: Why is the line spacing so much looser than other fonts, such as Times New Roman?
        Q: Can I use Andika in my print publication?
        Q: Can I use Andika on my website?
        Q: Can I make changes to Andika?
        Q: I'm having a problem with extra line spacing before the last line of a paragraph in Publisher. Do you have a solution?
    Known Issues

Frequently Asked Questions

Question: Where does the name "Andika" come from?

Answer: Andika — pronounced ahn-DEE-kah

Swahili — spoken widely in southeastern regions of the African continent, among other places. ( Ethnologue)

Meaning — "Write!"

Question: What characters are included in this release?

Answer: Andika covers over 2,100 characters from the Unicode 6.0 standard. See Supported Character Ranges for the full listing.

Question: What are all the stages of release for the Andika fonts?

Answer:

Andika Design Review — completed

Andika Basic — completed

Andika Regular — where we are now

Andika Basic Bold, Basic Italic, and Basic Bold Italic

Andika Bold, Italic, and Bold Italic

Question: Why is the line spacing so much looser than other fonts, such as Times New Roman?

Answer: Our SIL Unicode Roman fonts include characters with multiple stacked diacritics that need a much looser line spacing (for example, U+1EA8 ). We cannot make the line spacing tighter without experiencing “clipping” of those characters. You may be able to overcome this by adjusting the line spacing in the application. For example, in Microsoft Word select Format / Paragraph and set the line spacing to use the Exactly setting and a value more suited to your needs. For example, if the font size is 12 pt, select line spacing of Exactly 13 pt. This will give a tighter line spacing. You can adjust the value up or down depending on how many diacritics you need to stack.

In a separate download we also provide a font called Andika Compact which is exactly the same as Andika except it has a tighter line spacing.

Question: Can I use Andika in my print publication?

Answer: Andika is released under the SIL Open Font License, which permits use for any publication, whether electronic or printed. For more answers to usage questions, see the OFL-FAQ web version (1.1-update2). The license, along with information specific to this release, is in the release package.

Question: Can I use Andika on my website?

Answer: Yes. You can create web pages that request that Andika be used to display them. With Andika v 1.00 we also provide in the "web" download package a WOFF font. See Using SIL Fonts on Web Pages for instructions on using fonts on web pages.

Question: Can I make changes to Andika?

Answer: Yes! That is allowed as long as you abide by the conditions of the SIL Open Font License. And we would be very interested in seeing any changes you might make. See Notes to contributors for more information.

Question: I'm having a problem with extra line spacing before the last line of a paragraph in Publisher. Do you have a solution?

Answer: This is a Microsoft Publisher problem that shows with some fonts, including Andika, and not in others. There are workarounds including to specify line spacing as a point size, rather than a space size. A Microsoft forum discusses it here.

This affects Publisher 2003 and 2007 and some versions of 2010. It appears to be okay in Publisher 2010 when all current updates have been applied.

Known Issues

We are aware of the following problems. Please report any others you may encounter.

There has been no manual hinting done, but we have greatly improved the overall autohinting parameters. Please evaluate the letterforms from printed text, but let us know if you find severe distortions. In any case, the fonts should look fine when printed.
The font does not support the AAT capabilities that are in Doulos SIL and Charis SIL.
On some systems tone contours have small spaces between each segment of a contour in OpenType support (this problem does not occur using Graphite).
When using ffi and fi ligatures with the i-tail feature, the "i" in the ligature will not turn into an i-tail. This is a Graphite-only problem.
The font does not yet provide non-Literacy alternates for U+0250 LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED A and U+1D44 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL TURNED A. Unfortunately this means there is no way to distinguish visually between U+0250 LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED A and U+0252 LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED ALPHA. This is something we hope to fix in the next update to Andika).
The Graphite features in this font are not currently handled by the CSS support in Firefox 11.